


A Death in the Family

by MsMay



Series: My DCU [8]
Category: DCU
Genre: Character Death, Family, Mourning, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 13:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13435794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsMay/pseuds/MsMay
Summary: This is a character study for Helena Wayne that imagines what she would have been like if she grew up in the same universe as the rest of the batfamily. In this iteration she is younger than Dick, but older than Jason.It has never really occurred to her that death could happen without her active participation in it. Death was not a thing that came for her while she was in civvies, it was something she hunted, something chased through the dark streets under the cover of building shadows, and flickering, sick, sick yellow lights.The man gestures again. She doesn’t move. He holds his gun very still.She thinks she might actually die.





	1. A Death In the Family

**Author's Note:**

> I have never understood why Helena Wayne was not integrated into the batfamily. I mean Helena Berinelli (Wayne, but with a different back story) has been Batman at points and actually designed Cassandra's costume? Anyway, she should be a part of the batfamily, and I am on a crusade to reintroduce her. Enjoy.

Helena stares listlessly at the robbery going on in front of her. She is distantly aware that she should do something about this. Fight someone. Put the bad guys in the ground. Save someone. But no matter how many times she thinks the thought nothing in front of her changes. Her body doesn’t move. One of the robbers points a gun at her face.

_Oh_ , she thinks. _I’m being robbed._ That’s never happened to her before. The robber shouts something at her, flicking his gun. She stares back. It has never really occurred to her that death could happen without her active participation in it. Death was not a thing that came for her while she was in civvies, it was something she hunted, something chased through the dark streets under the cover of building shadows, and flickering, sick, sick yellow lights.

The man gestures again. She doesn’t move. He holds his gun very still.

She thinks she might actually die.

Then there is a blur of movement, and the robber is lying face down on the ground. His gun clatters across the asphalt.

“Hey. Fancy seeing you here.”

Helena looks at the boy -man? - standing before her, and her stupor parts like mist before the sunlight.

“Dicky!” She laughs and throws her arms around his neck. It is safe to use his name when he’s dressed in civvies too. She is so glad for that. She does not think she could bear the other name.

“Helena!” He’s way too short to pick her up, but he does his best to try.  

“I missed you, it’s been _ages,_ ” Helena says, tightening her grip and then dropping back to the ground.

“Yeah, I know. The Titans have kept me busy.” He brushes his hair back from his eyes, and looks off to the side. His hair is getting a little long. She wants to tell him to get a haircut, but the days when she could bully her big brother into having actual taste have long since passed. 

“So I’ve heard,” she says. Dick doesn’t respond immediately, just adjusts his shades.

“What the hell were you doing Helena?” Dick asks in a hushed voice, as if the bystanders have any hope of intuiting the subtext. His smile is tight, his eyes a little accusatory.

“I had him exactly where I wanted him,” she says. She probably would have done something. Dick’s smile stays tight. “I’m headed to pick up some flowers before dinner. Wanna come?”

He hesitates. Dick’s not a detective, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t know a lie, a distraction, and an out when he hears one.

“Sure,” he says.

 

. . .

 

They wander around a local shop, called _Delilah,_ with pretty frosted glass windows, and big loopy letters in the sign.

“Lilies,” Dick says. Helena makes a face.

“Lilies are a cliché.”

“You’re a cliché.”

Helena snorts a laugh, dragging Dick towards the back of the shop where the flowers are weirder. They bicker some more over which flowers are appropriate, until Helena’s eyes catch on an overflow of purple bell-shaped flowers. She checks the nametag.

“Wisteria, for remembrance. Unique and beautiful,” Helena says, picking up a bundle.

“I’m still getting the lilies,” Dick says. 

 

. . .

They walk together in silence to the manor, each with their bouquet of flowers. The sky is overcast, and Helena has an itching feeling underneath her skin. At the front door, Dick turns to her.

“Would you mind taking these to Alfred for me?” he says.

“Why can’t you?” she asks, although she fears she knows.

“I want to talk to Bruce,” he says. Helena smiles and nods her head, but her hand shakes as she takes the flowers.

When they step inside, her father is sitting on a sofa just past the foray. He had the decency to wear a black shirt with his tux. That’s nice.

He stands to greet Dick. Dick slaps his hand away.

For a moment, everything seems to happen so quickly that Helena doesn’t realize anything has happened. One moment she is standing in her living room. The next moment, the tiffany lamp has been knocked off the table, and her flowers are on the carpet, and Alfred has his hand around her shoulder.

Dick’s face is red, tear streaked.

She has never heard Dick scream like that. She would never hear him scream like that again.

Then the kitchen door is shut behind her, and Alfred wraps his arms around her, and a sob rises hard, and terrible in her throat. She hugs Alfred back, clinging to him like she when she was a child.

Dick’s face seems to haunt her mind.

“Alfred, he’s going to kill him,” she says. The sound of Dick’s voice travels through the door, it practically shakes the house, though Helena cannot hear what is saying. She can imagine the exact words well enough.

“Shh, shh, no he won’t,” Alfred coos, petting her hair and rocking them both gently.  

“He’d let him. Father would let him kill him,” Helena says. Her voice breaks around the horrible, hysterical, thought that she might lose her father too. And then she would lose Dick, and one by one everyone would be lost.   

Alfred doesn’t bother to lie to her. She grew up scrambling around beneath his silver platter, but she’s too old to be shielded from life’s more awful truths now. Her father would let Dick kill him if that’s what Dick wanted to do. It is only by some grace that Dick’s grief makes him so much more sad than angry.   

“Your father knows what to do. This isn’t his first funeral. He will help master Richard get through this,” Alfred says. His arms are firm though she can feel the way he is shaking too.

“He didn’t-But he- didn’t know for me.” She hiccups as her lungs struggle to keep up with tears.

“He left you with me,” Alfred says. Another sob breaks full force from her throat.

She shakes herself to pieces in Alfred’s arms.  

 

. . .

 

Jason’s grave is an upright cross.

 

. . .

 

Helena sees the eyes of others, as they glide across her skin. She fancies that she can hear their thoughts.

Darling girl, all dressed up in her finest black chiffon. The thing is effervescent, light, a floating twirl of black, a human chiaroscuro. And she looks well. They will write about it in the papers, Helena Wayne was wearing black chiffon, and Chanel pumps to the public funeral.  

This funeral is so much worse than the private memorial. It has to be such a fiasco, with the press, and the dear friends of family, and the dear socialites who used to whisper about the street rat in a tux. Helena wishes he was here to make snide remarks and misbehave with her.

Dick puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes it. Babs holds her hand, and wipes at her tears with the other. Helena cannot help but feel that there should be a third person here to comfort her.

She cannot believe he is dead.

A priest talks about reconciling our sadness at his loss with our joy at heaven’s gain. We must trust that he is in a better place.  

Her father talks about reconciliation. We must reconcile ourselves with the presence of death, the fact that death means an absence of presence. Yes, reconciliation speaks well. It wants to wipe her tears. Reconciliation dresses well.

They have a press conference –stupid- of all the things none of them need-

But it’s important to say it once. They have to do it just once, so they don’t have to say it over and over and over again (She still has to do it, she still has to say it over and over, or listen over and over and she still can’t believe that he is dead) and then they can move on. They can reconcile themselves with this new life.

Helena wonders how one gets a new life. She is still living the same life she always has. She can’t believe he’s dead. This is the same life. She still feels like a big sister and her mind fills in the gaps where he should be, a picture, a joke, a moment, Jason would-, someone get Jason- oh shit they’re late- missing one plate . . .

“Hey Jason-”

She wears purple taffeta. The dress is an old favorite, but the ribbon she ties her hair back with is black. Maybe she’s too old for the ribbon. She’s older than he was. She’s not a child. He was a child. When he first came, Alfred was always calling him, “Young man.”

Still, she looks nice. Always well dressed in tragedy, like Jackie O was. That’s what they compare her to. She didn’t have blood on her dress though. If she had been close enough to get blood on her dress, maybe he wouldn’t be gone.  

Someone flashes her a caring smile on the street corner. People have moved past not mentioning it, to saying sweet, obvious, things.

“Your eyes are red,” they say, with a soothing, sympathetic frown. She wants to scream at them. She wants to say, why yes I’ve been sobbing you fucker. She doesn’t.

Vanity Fair interviews her. She’s not entirely sure when their business model expanded to fit death, but she supposes it makes sense. Everything seems to have expanded to fit death now-a-days.  

 “Some days are hard, but I cherish his memory.”

Smile- face the camera

And she is the picture of reconciliation.

And she is mourning well.

“So _strong.”_

She can’t . . .

Morning wells up in watery yellow light, making a strong break with the still shadows of her room, light/dark, that sort of thing. It crosses the threshold of her bed, up, to her shelves, and then it lands on the white faced porcelain dolls that she has never loved, never, she has never . . .

She cannot.

 

. . .

 

At long last the door creeks open, hesitant, aware that the body is intruding, but with just enough bravado to know it will be forgiven, oh and it has to be-

“Helena-”

It is not the face she wants to see.

 

. . .

 

“Helena, honey please eat.”

 

. . .

 

“Helena darling, talk to me.”

 

. . .

 

“Helena sweetheart, _please._ ”

 

. . .

 

The door opens. It does not creak open. It has no reticence. It does not recognize intrusion, the body is the house, is her, is the family.

“Mistress Helena, I am sorry to say that your time is up. You do not have to be okay, but you do have to get up.”

Some sense of feeling returns to her body at that thought. Alfred pulls the covers away. He takes her hand and helps her sit up. He helps her stand and walk to the shower. She washes off months of desperation, and ruin.

Her father is waiting at the breakfast table.

“Where’s Dick?” she asks.

“He went back to Bludhaven a few weeks ago,” her father says. “Kory is pregnant.”  Ah, right. He has his own family there.

“I want to eat outside, if that’s alright,” Helena says. Her father nods.

They eat together in front of Jason’s upright cross. Helena continues to sit there long after her father must return to the offices, and then later, the streets.

The cross is white against the purple night.

She thinks it is a lovely image.

 

. . .

 

Timothy Drake arrives four days later, with bright eyes and plea. Helena remembers the Drake family from a handful of galas. She remembers a little boy with a camera, and a bright outlook. This boy is a little more tentative, a little more desperate for anyone’s attention.

 He is theirs, at least for a time. He will live and breathe as a Bat, as a Wayne, and then Tim will not be theirs anymore. He has his own family go to. If only all brothers came with timestamps. Or maybe the problem could be solved if all brothers had their own fathers, not just hers. They could move back and forth, not freely, but with care.

No. That is no way to live.

Tim deserves to have everything they have to offer him, while he is still with them.

Helena Wayne will rise to the occasion, because that is what Helena Wayne does. She will leave bruises on the boys who say Tim is not a real Wayne, who say he is not part of her mess and her father’s mess and Alfred’s mess.

At night she will do what all Waynes do; she will beat back Gotham’s darkness. She will leave a physical reminder on those demon’s skins even as her father tries to lock up the Robin suit for good. She will not need that suit, couldn’t wear it anyway. Dick will not wear the suit either. Tim will struggle to enter into this family in the only way he knows how and his father will lie:

“I work alone.”

And Helena Wayne will rise to the occasion. Genius girl, promising girl, will take two gap years to hold her family together, until her brother, genius boy, promising boy, will take two steps forward, and his father will lie, and Tim take no steps back.

“Batman needs a Robin.”

And it will be hard to see a Boy Wonder, a little boy in green and red, but it will never be as hard as a death in the family.

 


	2. A Death in the Family- Reprise

Jason is the one who sends her the message. Jason will _always_ be the one who sends the message. She gets it as she comes out of the shower, towel drying her hair, because at this point she doesn’t care if it damages her hair. Law school a bitch, especially when it's at a college she doesn’t really like, and when the tests are for a degree she doesn’t think is particularly useful.

Sometimes she wants to run back to Gotham and do nothing but what she is good at. But then she has to remind herself that if she really does love Gotham as much as she says she does, she has to find a better way to help it. Sometimes the people of Gotham need their asses kicked. But sometimes they need help too. That’s why she’s stuck here, even as she knows something’s going down at home. It can’t be too bad though. If it was they would call her, or send out a red alert or something.  

She throws herself down on the couch. Black Canary glances at her out of the corner of her eye.

“You know you have your own apartment,” she says, stirring a pot. Helena doesn’t know what it is but she loves the smell.

“Yeah, and you can hire a real baby sitter for Sin,” she says. Her phone buzzes on the coffee table. Helena reaches for it, but the coffee table is just a little too far away.

“Touché,” Dinah concedes. “Actually, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about Sin.”

Helena hums her acknowledgement as she reaches for the phone again. Still too far. Ugh, she does not want to get up.

“Do you think that maybe you could help introduce her to Cassandra?” Dinah asks. She fidgets over her pot.

“Sure,” Helena says. The phone buzzes again, reminding her that she has a message.

“I know it might be- wait really? You don’t think that’s weird?”

“Is there a reason it would be weird?”

Helena tries again and half falls off the couch. The logical thing to do would be to get up off the couch, but now this has sort of become a _thing_ and Helena does not just let _things_ go.

“Well, Sin was sort of her replacement . . .”

“Right, so they should get along well.” She’s really only half listening to Dinah. Most of her energies are focused on getting the phone.

“Do people usually get along well with their replacements?”

“In my experience it’s fifty-fifty,”

“What?”

“Dick gets along pretty well with Jason when Jason’s not trying to kill him. I get along great with Babs and Cass. Steph and Cass get along.” Helena gives up. She stands to go check her phone. The message has faded so she flips through the lock screen and flicks over to her messages. “Jason and Tim had some real issues at first, and Tim and Damian. . .” 

_Damian is dead._

“What were you saying about Tim and Damian? Helena? Hey, wait where are you- Helena!”

 

. . .

 

They have laid the body out in the living room. It has not yet gone cold. The blood has not yet been wiped away. Helena runs in through the front door. Tears are already streaming down her face when Dick catches her round the waist. Jason pushes her shoulder back as she struggles to reach forward.

“ _Damian-”_

Her baby brother.

There he is, her baby brother.

“ _Damian-”_

Lying on the dining room table.

Still, so still, Damian was never _still_ , he can’t be-

“Shh, Helena, shh,” Dick says, resting his head against her shoulder, and holding her a little tighter. She tries to scratch at his arms, to make him let go. “I know, I know, shhh,” he says.

Jason presses his forehead to the side of her head. This is the closest Jason has ever come to hugging her. Even when he died, and they found him, and she hugged him, he was never this . . .

“It’s not _fair,”_ she screams.

Her sobs break her throat.

“I know,” Jason says. Dick begins to shake at her side.

Distantly she realizes that he is covered in blood too.

They all are. Babs looks her in the eye, and then looks to the others.

The others, the babies, the little ones, the children she had always thought of as-

Small.

Fragile.

In need of protection.

They are drawn to her in slow, measured steps as if they are worried about frightening her. How could they possibly be afraid of frightening her? How could she get more frightened than she is now?

(A twisted part of her brain answers: _If you lost them, if you were all alone-)_

Cassandra slips in between Helena and Jason, frighteningly small as she presses against Helena’s side. Babs stands next to Dick, throwing her arms around Helena neck and pressing her face to the top of Helena’s head. Steph slips underneath Jason’s other arm, and wiggles her arms around Helena, a little lower than Dick’s. She presses her face against Helena’s chest, and only then does she show any indication that she knows how to sob. Tim places a hand on her shoulder, and then rests his forehead on top of his hand.

Those who still have tears left, cry.

Those who do not keep their dead eyes turned down.

Wherever Bruce and Alfred are, Helena cannot see them.

She wonders if they are crying.

 

. . .

 

Helena stops by _Delilah’s_ to buy flowers. She runs into Dick.

“Déjà vu,” he says. She gives him the same small smile she gave him so many years ago.

“A little different,” she says. Mar’i rounds the corner, carrying a bouquet of white lilies.

“I like these, Papa,” she says. Helena can tell by her bright eyes, and happy mouth that she does not understand why she is buying flowers.

“I think he’ll like them,” Dick says. Mar’i preens, as if Damian will one day praise her. Dick looks at Helena.

“The wisteria’s in the back,” he says, and then he shuffles his daughter up to the counter. The woman there gives them a sad smile, and a discount they really don’t need.

Helena wonders if, when the woman opened this flower shop and imagined what type of regulars she would have, she ever imagined them.

 

. . .

 

Tim sits by the grave with his knees tucked underneath his chin watching it with dull eyes. There’s a bouquet of black tulips at his feet.

“Hey,” Helena calls as she sits down a few feet away. Tim looks up.  

“Hey,” he says.

Helena holds her wisteria in her lap. There is already a colony of flowers. She sees Dick’s lilies, and guesses that the poppies are from Alfred. A huge arrangement with bright red Gladiolas takes up the center of the grave, and damn near blocks out the grave stone. That would have been Bruce’s choice. The cluster of unadorned baby’s breath must have been her mother’s. ‘Baby’ was her nickname for Damian. One bouquet of bluebells and lupine catches her eyes, though she can’t say she knows who it belongs to. A crown of laurel rings what Helena can see of the gravestone. Carnations and Chrysanthemums speckle the ground in groups or single flowers. There is a potted orchid off to the side, and two pots of hydrangeas.

There is a jar on the grave, the kind you would put a person’s ashes in.

“It’s Cass’s gift. She says that burning an assassin’s cloak will give their spirit rest,” Tim says. Helena stars, staring at him. She had not thought she was so obvious.

“I see,” she says, and then her mouth opens without meaning to. “How many funerals does this make?”

Tim closes his eyes, letting his head lull to the side.

“Eight,” he says. Helena tries figure out who he’s talking about, but she must be missing a few. They were probably friends in Young Justice that she never knew.

“Does it get easier?” she asks.

“No,” he says.

 

. . .

 

Babs knocks on the door to her apartment. Helena chooses not to answer it. She knows that Babs can get in if she really wants to.

“Helena, you in there? I brought Thai food and that new Fast and Furious movie I _know_ you secretly want to watch.”

Helena almost wants to laugh, but her apartment is dark, and she likes the way the quiet matches the dark.

“Okay, you know what, I’m coming in anyway.”

The door flies open with a bang, scattering a few woodchips as it does. The bolt on the door swings limply from the side. Helena looks up from the couch, and waves Babs over. Babs’ shoulders sag. She wanders over to the kitchenette and sets the bags of food she was carrying down. Helena’s next door neighbor, a fidgety Bio major, pokes her head out the door and wanders over.

“Is everything okay?” she asks. Babs gives her a thumbs up.

“Just peachy.”

“Um who are-”

Babs shuts the door in her face. Now that the silence has broken, Helena feels okay with laughing. Babs looks at her, and then she looks around the empty apartment.

“Where’s Zatanna?” They had been rooming since freshman year. It was easier for the both of them to live with someone who didn’t ask too many questions. Besides, it was good for Helena to have someone that positive around. It would have been good to have her now.

“Magical spirit quest. She left before,” Helena says.  

“She didn’t come back?”

“I didn’t tell her.”

“ _Helena-”_

“There’s no point,” Helena says. She closes her eyes and resumes her waiting.

“What is that supposed to mean. Helena? Helena answer me!”

Babs is inches away from picking Helena up by the shoulders and shaking her, when the phone chimes. Helena’s eyes snap open. Babs jerks to a stop. When she looks at Helena, her eyes go wide, and her mouth opens, but there are no words there.

“Tell me no,” Helena says, as she scrambles for her phone. She catches Babs’ eye just as she gets her hand on the case. “If you think it’s wrong, tell me no.”

Babs does not say a word. Her eyes flick to the screen, waiting.

In that moment Helena realizes that Babs has been like her: waiting. She did not know she was waiting. Most people hold tightly to the idea that life and death operate as absolutes. They pretend that there is less room for change than there really is. Perhaps all of them have been waiting. She wonders, when she enters the manor will her family be ready to do what it takes?

Jason is the one who sends her the message. Jason will always be the one who sends the message.

 

_The grave is empty._

It is not the excuse she is expecting, but it will do just as well. 

She writes back one message, short and sweet:

 

_Let’s bring him back._


End file.
